In the News (Fri 18 Aug 17)

StuartHameroff first became interested in the problem of consciousness as an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh.

In the early 1990´s the study of consciousness became increasingly popular, and he was strongly influenced by Roger Penrose´s The Emperor´s New Mind, 1989, and Shadows of the Mind, 1994, Oxford Press, concerning the possible role of quantum effects in consciousness.

Hameroff, S.R. and Scott, A.C. A Sonoran Afternoon Toward a Science of Consciousness II The Second Tucson Discussions and Debates, eds.

Hameroff is an anesthesiologist, but he moonlights as one of the world's foremost authorities on tiny structures in our cells called microtubules.

Hameroff points out that microtubules in their quantum states may be encased in a gelatinous isolation.

Hameroff scoffs at such talk, preferring instead to muse that the backward-forward flexibility of time in quantum collapse accounts for our ability to act now, in real time, rather than just after the fact.

home.comcast.net /~neardeath/science/001_pages/39.htm (4710 words)

Quantum Consciousness(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05)

In Hameroff and Penrose (1996; and in summary form, Penrose and Hameroff, 1995), we present a model linking microtubules to consciousness, using quantum theory as viewed in the particular "realistic" way that is described in Shadows of the Mind (Penrose, 1994).

Book review of Stuart Hameroff(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05)

The American anesthesiologistStuartHameroff wrote a book that ultimately deals with the co-evolution of consciousness and technology, but specifically it highlights one structure of living cells that had been previously neglected.

Hameroff shows how physical models from holorams to solitons can be used to model the physics of the brain.

Hameroff also believes that the roots of consciousness itself are in the cytoskeleton.

StuartHameroff, MD, is an anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Arizona known for his promotion of the scientific study of consciousness, and his speculative theories of the "mechanisms" of consciousness.

His early research suggested to him that part of the solution to the problem of understanding consciousness may lie in understanding the operations of microtubules in brain cells, operations at the molecular and supramolecular level.

StuartHameroff is also expected to be on the silver screen sharing his knowledge about alternate universes, human consciousness and the mind in two more upcoming flicks - a film about about mysticism produced by Madonna and in an upcoming boxed-set DVD edition of "The Matrix" trilogy of movies.

Hameroff's work with the University of Arizona's Center for Consciousness Studies has garnered worldwide attention in scientific and spiritual circles.

Hameroff says he was disappointed in the film overall because it "dropped the ball" on the quantum connection and concedes that many scientists he knows have been similarly unimpressed with the movie.

Hameroff said he became fascinated with the study of consciousness during his anesthesiology...

www.coasttocoastam.com /guests/1276.html (160 words)

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StuartHameroff (Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA) Monday, August 23, 1999 at 5 p.m.

StuartHameroff (l947) practices and teaches clinical anesthesiology at University Medical Center and does research into the mechanism of consciousness at the University of Arizona.

A book of selected papers from that conference (Toward a Science of Consciousness -The First Tucson Discussions and Debates, S Hameroff, A Kaszniak, A Scott, Eds., MIT Press/Bradford Books, Cambridge MA) was published in the spring of 1996.

Roger Penrose and I have completed two recent papers (Hameroff and Penrose, 1996a; 1996b) which describe "orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR)" of quantum coherence in microtubules as a formal model of consciousness.

M.D. Stuar Hameroff M.D. is a Professor at the Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

He has been interested in the role of quantum mechanics in consciousness, and has collaborated with British physicist Sir Roger Penrose on a controversial theory of quantum computation in structures called microtubules within the brain's neurons.

Hameroff spends most of his professional time in clinical anesthesiology, and his research time with a newly formed "Quantum consciousness group".

Penrose and Hameroff have proposed that consciousness in the human brain may be based on gravitational interactions and quantum superposition states of electrons in tubulin cages in microtubules.

Roger Penrose and StuartHameroff propose that Consciousness involves a Planck scale Decoherence of Quantum Superpositions that they call Orch OR in their paper entitled Orchestrated Objective Reduction of Quantum Coherence in Brain Microtubules: The "Orch OR" Model for Consciousness.

This is the decoherence time T = h / E. For a given Particle, StuartHameroff describes this as a particle being separated from itself, saying that the Superposition Separation a is "...

www.valdostamuseum.org /hamsmith/QuantumMind2003.html (8752 words)

Consciousness and Physics

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StuartHameroff, "Funda-mentality": Is the conscious mind subtly linked to a basic level of the universe?

StuartHameroff and Roger Penrose, Orchestrated reduction of quantum coherence in brain microtubules: A model for consciousness

StuartHameroff and Alwyn Scott, A Sonoran afternoon: Dialogue on quantum mechanics and consciousness

Subject: Its about time (Severinghaus, Newman) [StuartHameroff, in q-mind Sun, 9 Aug 1998]: The Orch OR model involves events which are self-organized quantum state reductions (Whitehead "occasions of experience") in spacetime geometry.

Stuart Its a beautiful assertion, and could be true in some sense.

Stuart is uncharacteristically laconic re "orchestration" and its self-organizing principle.

StuartHameroff was inspired by Penrose's book The Emperor's New Mind (1989) to contact Penrose regarding his own theories about the mechanism of anesthesia and how it specifically targets consciousness via action on neural microtubules.

Hameroff directs the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona http://consciousness.arizona.edu/, and sponsors seminars on consciousness theory.

"Assume consciousness is indeed occurring at the level of fundamental spacetime geometry at the Planck scale," says StuartHameroff, Professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology and of Psychology at the University of Arizona, "connected to our brains by quantum processes in microtubules.

Today's interview is part of an ongoing discussion with serious thinkers about life, the universe, and everything conducted by New York based writer and editor Jill Neimark.

Stuart R. Hameroff M.D. is Professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology and of Psychology, and Associate Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

This is perhaps due to free electrons or photons generated within super-charged proteins (see quote by StuartHameroff).

Hence the shine of people in the height of metamorphosis...the hyper-merger of the heart-brain, stomach-brain and the head-brain is just symptomatic of the whole bodymind going into this synergistic, amplified communication, superconductivity, bliss buzz we call enlightenment.

The following quote by StuartHameroff is key to the whole metamorphic process, and the reason why people going thru certain stages of metamorphosis shine light.

Dr Hameroff is best-known for his research on 'quantum consciousness', an alternative model to the accepted view of how consciousness arises.

With Sir Roger Penrose, Dr Hameroff has proposed that consciousness arises at the quantum level within structures inside neurons, known as microtubules.

As such, we recently had a short chat with Dr Hameroff to clarify some of these issues, and also to ask other questions related to the idea of 'quantum consciousness'.

www.dailygrail.com /node/view/842 (2156 words)

Untitled Document(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05)

Pat and I wrote a critical review of the Penrose/Hameroff theory of the connection between quantum mechanics and consciousness (this paper is available from this website under the 'Papers' menu), and in their reply this rather amusing illustration appears.

Roger Penrose is the rabbit, of course, and StuartHameroff is the caterpillar.

In the last line of our paper, Pat and I characterize the Penrose/Hameroff thesis as "no better supported than any one of a gazzilion caterpillar-with-hookah hypotheses" (a line I wish I could take credit for, but alas, it was Pat's).

The best candidate to connect the two comes from University of Oxford physicist Roger Penrose and physician StuartHameroff of the Arizona Health Sciences Center, whose theory of quantum consciousness has generated much heat but little light.

We should be exploring consciousness at the neural level and higher, where the arrow of causal analysis points up toward such principles as emergence and self-organization.